"Major Dundee: The Extended Version"

Sam Peckinpah's 1965 western starring Charlton Heston and Richard Harris gets the full lost-masterpiece treatment.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Apr 6, 2005 | When we talk about a lost masterpiece, we're usually thinking of, or at least hoping for, a treasure that exists somewhere in a close-to-perfect form, if only we could find it. With movies, it's almost never that easy.

"Major Dundee," Sam Peckinpah's first large-scale western, is a lost masterpiece of the imagination. When it was released, in 1965, the picture was rejected by critics and audiences alike, but not because Peckinpah had fallen down on the job. The picture was beset by problems from the start: Its studio, Columbia, cut its budget by a third before filming had even begun. And beyond the fact that certain key scenes were never even shot, the picture was taken from Peckinpah and cut by some 20 to 50 minutes before its release. As it was originally seen, "Major Dundee" had some baffling gaps, and historically, it has been treated as a potentially great picture and a frustrating disappointment.

Sony Pictures has at last redressed -- or attempted to redress -- the sins of its corporate fathers by restoring as much as possible of Peckinpah's original cut and commissioning a new score -- a fine one, by Christopher Caliendo -- more in keeping with the spirit of the picture. "Major Dundee: The Extended Version" -- which opens Friday in New York at Film Forum, and April 15 in Los Angeles and Boston, to be followed by stints in other major cities thereafter -- isn't the model of clarity that Peckinpah fans may be hoping for. While the plot is easy enough to follow, the second half of the picture still doesn't come close to fulfilling the promises of the first, suggesting that while the studio's butchery certainly didn't help "Major Dundee," some of the movie's problems may have been rooted deeper in its conception.

But the flaws of "Major Dundee" don't begin to nag at you until after the fact: As the picture unfolds, for the first hour at least, it has the look and feel of a masterpiece -- it's a picture rushing toward something, and despite the grave disappointment that it never quite gets there, you never doubt you're in the presence of greatness.

Charlton Heston stars as Amos Dundee, a demoted Union officer who's been put in charge of a prison filled with lowlifes. A group of renegade Apaches have just led a massacre on a New Mexico settlement; Dundee has been assigned to rescue two young boys who have been abducted (the rest of the settlement has been killed) and to capture or kill the group's leader, Sierra Charriba (Michael Pate).

It's late 1864, and the Civil War has drained the supply of good, able men. So in order to complete the assignment that will restore his honor -- in his own mind, at least -- Dundee assembles the best team of men he can find, which includes several dutiful Union officers (played by Michael Anderson Jr., Brock Peters and the great Jim Hutton), a leathery, one-armed scout (James Coburn), assorted horse thieves and drunkards (played by the wonderful Peckinpah regulars Dub Taylor and Slim Pickens), and a group of scruffy, stubborn Confederate prisoners (among them Warren Oates and L.Q. Jones) led by Captain Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris), who's so reluctant to serve the enemy that he asks to be put to death instead: He'd rather fight than switch.

But Dundee needs Tyreen desperately, and the conflict between the two is what gives the picture its rustic delicacy and emotional sharpness. Dundee and Tyreen have a murky past: They were formerly friends and West Point classmates, but Dundee can't forgive Tyreen, an Irish immigrant, for going off to fight for the wrong side. The fractured friendship between the two men intensifies their differences: Tyreen is something of a rapscallion, but he's also a spirited, visionary leader who has earned the respect of his men. Dundee is obstinate and literal, and he demands obedience, but we get the sense he was once something more -- some wartime disgrace or horror has eroded him, but we don't quite know what it is.

Unfortunately, Dundee is set up to be a more complex character than he ever turns out to be. At the beginning we see him as noble, reliable and steadfast, but he's also a cracked man. Armed with those shorthand clues, we keep waiting for him to become interesting, and he never does. Meanwhile, Tyreen, whose sexual charisma is a chief component of his leadership qualities -- not even Dundee can resist him -- holds us in a fugue state of anticipation. What will he do next? When will we see him again? He's the devilish boy who leaves us hanging, delectably.

Still, Dundee's inner torture remains the movie's focus, and there's never any release valve for it. When the movie ends, we understand him less than we did at the beginning -- and, even worse, we care for him less. It's nearly incomprehensible that the luscious Senta Berger, as a no-nonsense doctor's widow in a Mexican town, chooses the solid, dutiful, dull Dundee over Tyreen, the devilish rake. She needs duty, honor and reliability in her life: She's just that kind of woman. But even if it makes sense for the character, it's cinematically numbing.

Next Page: "A longer and, hopefully, more authentic version of the film"

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